'The BNP hijacked my film'

Anna Hall was devastated when her Channel 4 film, which investigated allegations that young white girls in Bradford were being groomed for sex, was used as rightwing propaganda. She talks to Anthea Milnes

This month, Channel 4 will finally screen Edge of the City, its controversial documentary depicting the bleak realities of life in the most deprived parts of Bradford. The film was originally due to go out in May, but hours before transmission it was pulled from the schedules, after it was advertised on the British National Party website as a "party political broadcast", and the chief constable of West Yorkshire warned that its screening could provoke community disorder in the run-up to the local and European elections.

The controversy centred on the film's claims that men - most of them British Asians - in Bradford and neighbouring Keighley were grooming under-age white schoolgirls for sex. At the eye of the storm was the film's producer and director, Anna Hall.

Hall's initial idea, she explains, was to make an observational documentary focusing on the daily lives of social workers. "Unlike doctors, fire-fighters, the police and other frontline services," she says, "there have been few films about social workers. The only time you hear about them is when things go wrong; you never hear what they do the rest of the time."

The choice of Bradford as a location, she says, was purely practical; the company she was working for, Chameleon TV, was based in Leeds, and wanted to feature a northern city. Bradford social services, which receives around 48,000 requests for help in a year, was the first department to agree to take part.

After talking to over 40 teams from Bradford social services, dealing with all kinds of clients, from adults with physical disabilities to children in respite care, Hall decided to focus on the four cases we see in the film: Caroline and Keith, a disabled couple, who have had to move eight times in eight years to escape harassment from local children; Matthew, a white teenager with 96 offences to his name, who turns a corner after working with Omar, a trainee social worker, and falling in love with Malika, a mixed-race girl; Eric, an 83-year-old pensioner, who wants to maintain his independence; and two white mothers who allege that their young teenage daughters have been groomed and sexually abused.

The explosive grooming story nearly didn't make the shortlist. Hall had already filmed several other stories through the children's department which she was unable to screen for legal reasons. "We weren't looking for this issue," she says. "It just kept surfacing. Social workers said, 'You can't do that story because it's too difficult.' What did they mean by 'too difficult'? Too racially sensitive?"

The social workers she spoke to were appalled and frustrated, but also frightened of becoming targets of violence if they spoke out publicly, as were the mothers she spoke to. Hall decided to confront these difficulties and work with two mothers whose anonymity she promised to preserve.

What emerges from these women's account, and from the testimony of two girls, one of them currently being groomed, is disturbing. Men from Bradford's Asian community, they claim, are targeting girls from 11 or 12 years up, taking them out in their cars, and giving them alcohol and gifts. The girls are flattered into believing that the men love them. Subsequently, they might be given heroin and crack cocaine and date-rape drugs, raped vaginally and anally, and in some cases, abducted and gang-raped.

According to Hall's film, the Keighley social services office has recorded 50 to 70 possible cases of grooming, while the children's charity Barnardo's currently has 15 projects working with young people across the UK who have been abused. But what struck Hall about the cases she found in Bradford and Keighley was that "blatant abuse was going on under people's noses, and no one seemed able to prevent it".

Prevention and cure are both difficult. Where the girls are over 13, police are unable to act unless they themselves make a complaint. Many of the girls either do not think they are being abused, or have been so heavily drugged that they cannot recall clearly what has happened, or are intimidated by what will happen to them and their families if they do speak out. Hall's hope was that the film would convey the sense of outrage felt by the victims' families and by social workers, and that this might lead to changes in the law and dedicated policing nationwide.

Then the BNP hijacked the issue. Channel 4 called Hall to say that an advert for the film had appeared on the BNP's website, describing it as a "party political broadcast" on their behalf. "I felt numb," Hall says. "The BNP had never even seen a single frame of the film."

Groups such as Unite Against Fascism, the 1990 Trust, and the National Assembly Against Racism began to flood Channel 4 with requests to delay transmission. The Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, Colin Cramphorn, joined the call, and Channel 4 complied. Both the police and Channel 4 stressed that the issue was the timing, so close to local and European elections. The mainstream press were quick to respond, accusing Channel 4 variously of naive scheduling, of handing a political coup to the BNP, of being politically motivated in withdrawing the film, of cravenness, and of self-censorship.

At the time, the BNP was campaigning for 10 seats across Bradford, including Keighley, where much of the grooming story was filmed. After the film was pulled, the BNP claimed that they were the only British political party to address the problem of grooming. In fact, the Labour MP for Keighley, Ann Cryer, has been working on behalf of parents and victims for some time now.

"It infuriates me when the racists of the BNP try to hijack this issue," Cryer says. "They do nothing to try and alleviate the problem while many of us are working hard to engineer real solutions." Khadim Hussain, district councillor for Keighley Central, agrees. "People were very angry," he says, "because the BNP simply used the problem to get publicity for themselves".

The BNP subsequently gained four seats on Bradford district council in the May local elections. But, says Hall, three months on: "I'm really upset that the film has been read as a slur on the Asian community. This is not a film made by a far-right racist. It was made by someone who likes human beings." After two years of hard work, the experience was shattering. "When your film is reduced to 'BNP Sex Row Film', as one headline had it, you feel pretty depressed," she says. "The story was misrepresented by both camps; the far right claimed it as political propaganda, while leftwing pressure groups contended that I was clearly racist." Hall vehemently rejects both views.

But for Hall and her team, and for the people she filmed, the worst thing about the BNP's intervention was that it made the real issues even harder to address. "I felt that the story of these mothers and their horrendous plight over the last three years was not worthy of a disgusting hijack by the BNP," says Hall. "I felt awful for the mothers who were accused of being BNP activists, which was 100% inaccurate. This slander was the last thing they needed, given all they've been through." One of the mothers featured in the film sent Hall a text message after the film was withdrawn, which read, "It's a real shame when votes come before young girls' lives."

In Bradford, things are starting to change. Since August 2003, 11 people - 10 men and one woman, white and Asian - have been charged with offences ranging from rape to indecent assault, witness intimidation, abduction and threats to kill. Three police protection orders have been taken out in relation to girls about whom social services have particular concerns. Bradford social services, together with Barnardo's and other agencies, are educating schoolgirls about the dangers of grooming.

Alison O'Sullivan, director of social services in Bradford, believes that the children's bill currently passing through parliament will help to put the multi-agency approach to the problem of grooming on a statutory footing. Nationwide, the criminal justice bill will, for the first time, ensure that hearsay evidence is admissible in such cases, and the sexual offences bill makes the grooming of a child a criminal offence in its own right.

A spokeswoman from the West Yorkshire police says, "In the case of alleged sexual exploitation of young women in Keighley, social services and the police have been conducting extensive enquiries for the last two years. A number of girls have been interviewed, aged mainly between 13 and 16. We have found no evidence of systematic exploitation. Some of the girls admitted having relationships with older men but they described them as their boyfriends and did not feel they were being exploited."

Hall is unconvinced that the situation has improved: some of the mothers she spoke to have told her their daughters are still being approached.

What the documentary does not make clear is how the Asian community in Bradford has responded to, or is addressing, the problem of grooming. Hall had hoped to feature a Pakistani woman she met who was challenging the men involved directly. "She was inspiring and courageous," Hall says, but in the end she was unable to appear, for personal reasons unconnected with the documentary.

Khadim Hussain says that community leaders in Keighley are now working with the police and social services to tackle the problem. "Criminals are criminals," he says, "and should be punished." In an article for the Eastern Eye, Omar Sheikh, the social worker featured in Hall's documentary, comments on the need for better community leadership: "Mosques could play a far greater role than at present, providing a positive role model," he suggests. "We need people with more impact than the police, who are just seen as the enemy. We need passionate community leaders who can play a bigger role in influencing the younger generation."

While she acknowledges that the authorities have made some progress in tackling the issue, Hall feels that there is still room for improvement: "One of the continual frustrations of the social workers I came across was that year-round policing on this issue is shaky, and interpretation of the law varies locally." One police officer in the film is seen explaining that, unlike burglary, child protection is not a police national target. Hall believes that the Home Office needs to put child protection on its national "strategic priority" list, in order to ensure that police can allocate the necessary resources to the problem.

Other factors in police and public reluctance to deal with grooming are more subtle; a senior Bradford child protection officer suggests that the problem is one not of race or culture, but of misogyny; there is the insidious idea that the girls are "trash" and that it is acceptable to use them for sex. "We cannot censor this issue," Hall says. "As a whole society, we need to say that we find these crimes unacceptable and are determined to deal with them."

Now that the documentary is to be screened, Hall hopes that people will see that its purpose is to foster compassion - compassion for the victims of serious crime, but compassion also for those people we prefer not to see; those who are odd, who do antisocial things, and who sometimes collude in their own misery.

The film portrays people who might more often be characterised as "neighbours from hell" with dignity and respect, and makes us sympathise with them. Keith, for example, first seen drunk and incoherent as his partner talks about how he tried to suffocate her, is later seen in tears, blaming himself for his own harass ment because he is "disabled and backward and thick".

Our preconceived notions about social workers are also challenged, as we see them struggling against the odds to make a difference to their clients' lives - grappling with multi-layered problems, held back by bureaucracy, lack of resources, their clients' unwillingness to cooperate, and sometimes even the law.

The irony that a film intended to confront stereotypes has been used as political propaganda by the BNP is not lost on Hall, but she remains determined that it should be seen: "I hope that people will take the film in its entirety and have their preconceptions challenged."

In his report following the Bradford riots in 2001, the former commissioner for racial equality, Sir Herman Ouseley, recommended that the city face up to its problems and not be afraid of them. Three years on, Edge of the City and the controversy surrounding it illustrate just how difficult this is.

· Edge of the City will be broadcast on Channel 4 on August 26 at 9pm.